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The Graphics Muse Will Return |
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Contents: |
Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1998 11:05:23 +0100
From: Maurizio Ferrari,
Maurizio.Ferrari@tin.it
Subject: Photogrammetry tools for Linux?
I am looking for a Linux program to do some close-range photogrammetry. Close range photogrammetry is a technique that enables to reconstruct 3D images from a series of 2D pictures. There are a few powerful (and relatively inexpensive) tools for Windows but none so far for Linux, that I know of. There was something once upon a time called Photo4D. Despite my massive Internet search, any occurrence of Photo4D seems to have been wipe erased from the face of earth. It is listed in SAL but all the links fail.
I don't want to resort to buy and use Windows software for this. Help, anyone?
Maurizio
Date: Sun, 07 Jun 1998 11:36:33 -0500
From: Mike Godwin,
mgodwin@socket.net
Subject: Searching (somewhat in vain) for sources on shell scripting
I recently came across an excellent mini-howto on overcoming some of the pitfalls of having a dynamic IP address (ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/unmaintained/mini/Dynamic-IP-Hacks).
Reading this document has refueled my desire to learn shell scripting, sed rules and the like. My search of the Internet for information on these topics has, however, been fruitless.
I would be most grateful if someone could point me to a good shell scripting tutorial or book.
Thanks in advance.
Mike
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 22:58:11 +0200
From: "Himbeergarten Hummel", himbeergarten.hummel@nanet.at
Subject: X Window System on a monochrome notebook
I've a 486dx notebook with a monochrome display what shall I do to make X windows run?
Himbeergarten Hummel
Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 13:06:28 PDT
From: "Dave Stevens",
davestevens@hotmail.com
Subject: kudos
I think the Coldiron article on replacing NT with Linux is the best thing I've seen in the gazette. Congratulations. More such articles are needed. I am especially interested in an article explaining why Linux doesn't come with a "system requirements" box on the package (no package??). Seriously, though, I am a computer dealer and have many times advised people to buy their application software first then buy a computer that will run that package. If I tell my customers to go out and buy a 386 with 16 MB of ram and a half MB video card and a 200 MB hard drive, they will think I am [characterization deleted!] in the head. And maybe they'll be right. How much difference does the underlying hardware make to the user of an X application, and how can I assess (for them) the varying cost effectiveness of a faster processor versus more RAM versus a SCSI disk versus just a bigger IDE disk. Maybe you can commission an article like this. (Don't even THINK of asking me). Someone of your loyal readers must have relevant experience to write up.
Great magazine, keep up the good work. If ever you find yourself in northern BC I will happily buy you a beer.
Dave Stevens
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 08:49:05 -0700 (PDT)
From: Renato Weiner,
reweiner@yahoo.com
Subject: Suggestion for Article
Recently I was looking at the Gazette and I think I have a good suggestion of an article that will be very useful for the Linux community.
I have had some technical difficulties of having two simultaneous versions of Kernels in my system. I mean a stable one and a developing one. I searched the net looking for information of how to co-exist both but it's completely fragmented.
If somebody more experienced could put all this information together, it will certainly help a lot of people from kernels developers to end-users.
Thanks a lot for your patience.
Renato.
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 10:42:06 +0200
From: Carlo Vinante,
vinante@igi.pd.cnr.it
Subject: Printing Problems
I've just updated to Red Hat 5.0, and I cannot print anymore documents using Ghostview, or LyX or whatever. Tests are OK. Have somebody a suggestion ?
Carlo Vinante
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 15:46:35 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Sara Briganti mat.1510,
briganti@CsR.UniBo.IT
Subject: Information
We are 4 Italian students and we're just have a look about ELM's sources.
We have a lot of problems about these...
Could you ELM us? Do you know any interesting site about how ELM
works? And about sendmail?
Thank you a lot. Bye.
Sara, Elsa, Michele, Livio
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 22:24:47 +0200
From: Daniele Verzelloni,
dverzel@tin.it
Subject: Network configuring
Help me in configuring Red Hat Linux about networking. I've a ISDN Adapter by Asuscom that I use for Internet in Windows95 and I can't configure it! I've even got an Ethernet adapter to go to another computer and in the same way I can't configure it! Thank you and sorry for my bad English, I'm Italian.
Daniele
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 23:12:30 +0200
From: Eric CANAL,
Eric.Canal@supelec.fr
Subject: a question
I've recently bought a CD-ROM recorder I would like to know if it is legal to make a Red Hat CD distribution for my own use. My idea is to copy the FTP distribution on a CD and to install it. I've tried but it tells me that I don't have a Red Hat CD-ROM. Do I miss a particular file?
thanks for your answer and BRAVO for your Gazette :)
a French reader, Eric Canal
(Better check with Red Hat about legalities. --Editor)
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 23:54:20 -0700
From: Ruth Milne,
rmilne@mail.bulkley.net
Subject: article idea
I have been reading a lot of speculation about whether Linux can ever displace Microsoft on the desktop. In the course of wading through a lot of hype I haven't seen much actual experience reported about an ordinary computer user installing Linux on their PC. I don't mean someone who is already a Linux enthusiast and I don't mean someone with a computer science degree either. Just an ordinary computer user with an IQ bigger than a shoe size, sitting down with a brand new Intel box and a Red Hat 5.1 package, say, and going through the hoops up to the point where X starts up okay and the modem is a working Internet device. This ought to be compared to such a person doing the same operation with a new box and a copy of W98. I think that would make a useful comparison.
Dave Stevens
Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 03:32:11 EDT
From: RangeScale@aol.com
Subject: Need older Linux
Okay, I am pretty new to Linux and am trying to learn it. The main problem is, is that I always have my desktop tied up doing more important things, and also don't have the room on it to hold Linux. My solution is to pull out my old 286 laptop (old but very good) and use that to start learning Linux. My big problem, though, is finding a version that will run on that. I have the Debian 1.3, but min reg. are 386+. Is there a ver. that will run on 286 - and where can I get it?
Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 00:47:14 +0200
From: B.L.Michielsen,
BMichielsen@csi.com
Subject: Communication Problem
I have a problem communicating with Compuserve through Seyon since I installed a 16650A serial card on my Dell 486DX2 66MHz running RedHat 4.1 Kernel 2.0.17. and a USRobotics SportsterMessagePlus
modem. Before, I used a 14.4 Hayes compatible modem connected to a serial port with a 16450 IC, in that configuration everything was slow
but OK. I am connecting to a Compuserve server with baud rates to 28.800bps. The characters in the Seyon terminal form unreadable garbage, and I cannot find out how to parameterize the connection to get it right. To complete the information, when I make a ppp connection to a 56kbps server of Compuserve and use Netscape communicator, everything runs perfectly well, so I guess the Seyon problem is not related to kernel parameters but rather to xterm?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Date: Tue, 02 Jun 98 12:19:28 -0500
From: cokeydepercin@pmsc.com
Subject: Article on home networking.
I just read a reply to the home networking article by Mr. Gray and I agree that home networking is cheap and easy. I disagree somewhat about the 100baseT. I've just upgraded from 10baseT to 100baseT. The hub was $100USD for an eight port hub with uplink and the cards were $30USD (Dec Tulip chip set). I've heard there may be some cheaper NICs now $20~25USD. My upgrade cost was $250 for 5 machines - 3 Win95, Linux server, multi-boot Linux/win95/NT - the cable was CAT5 to begin with. The additional cost of putting in 100 vs 10 is so slight, about $115 in this case as the cable is the same, that it isn't worth installing 10baseT. The advantage is that 100baseT and a reasonably fast Linux machine allows a Win95 machine to access apps almost as fast (in some cases faster) from the network than from its own drive. Note that I too build from junk as much as possible and the children's machines (the Win95 ones) are very low end Pentium and have old slow small drives than contain only the OS and swap. Everything else is on the server (install once use many!).
There is a caveat to this of course. 100baseT NICs for ISA machines are VERY expensive so if you have ISA machines, your only realistic choice is 10baseT. The one 100baseT ISA NCI I priced (3Com) cost more than all the PCI NICs for my upgrade.
Just my $0.02 or so. Keep up the good work, I really enjoy the magazine.
Cokey
Date: Tue, 02 Jun 1998 15:48:27 +0100
From: Raphael Marvie,
raphael.marvie@cs.man.ac.uk
Subject: Comment about LG last review
It took me 3 tries to get the full article about "Replacing NT by Linux" but I finally did it. I am very pleased to see people from the "real-world" as they call themselves to admit that Linux can avoid lot of people using bad softwares. There is only one thing that make me sad, the only people who are going to read this article are Linux users.
Is there any solution to make "real-world" people reading such article? I not talking of a holy war against M$, but I think the worse thing for Linux and other brilliant systems or soft is that the end user never heard of this solution.
The fact that Netscape has moved to Open Source Software was a big advert for the GNU/Linux solutions. I hope we will be able to take advantage of it to say to managers "Hey, we can do every thing you want, and in a better way than it is done yet by Micro$oft and Co. You just have not to think in buying a solution 60,000$ each year for updates but paying someone 60,000$ a year for building you the exact solution you need using Open Source Software. Which means for you having a *personal* *reliable* *IT* solution."
That is the challenge: teach them that a man or a woman is more important than a soft, because this man or this woman can adapt (him|her)self to the need of a firm, and is more important for the end user as a spring of information than a bad-written manual.
Keep on LG, the job you are doing is brilliant.
Linuxly yours, Raphael
Date: Tue, 02 Jun 1998 13:36:06 +0000
From: Andrew Josey,
a.josey@opengroup.org
Subject: Web resource - UNIX 98 Spec online
With the recent announcements concerning Linux and conformance to the UNIX 98 specification, I thought it would be useful to send you the URL where the online specification can be browsed, searched and downloaded.
Its at http://www.UNIX-systems.org/go/unix/
Perhaps you could include this as a tip in the next Linux gazette.
best regards, Andrew
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 12:19:44 +1000 (EST)
From: Con Zymaris,
conz@cyber.com.au
Subject: Article ideas...
It would be of general interest, and help the linux/open source community, if people out there were introduced to the concept of advocating that their local University had its Computer Science students' major final year projects written as open-source. For reasons why the students would want to do this, check out: http://www.cyber.com.au/misc/frsbiz/students.htm
Cheers, Con
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1998 16:04:12 -0700
From: "Travis Clark",
hilt@telepath.com
Subject: Simple Suggestion
To further Linux in this world of ours, I think it fitting that Linux Programmers look at two different ways this can be accomplished:
Travis Clark
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 14:50:45 -0400
From: Brian Catlin,
Brian_Catlin@BayNetworks.COM
Subject: Suggestions to improve readability
First, I would like to express my appreciation to all the authors for taking time to write excellent articles.
I do, however, have a suggestion or two that will make the accessibility of the zine that much better.
As background, I am one of your readers that prints out the zine, then reads it. It is much easier for my tired old eyes that way, and I also get a nice resource to use when the screen is cluttered with windows of different things for the project I am working on.
With that said, I have a couple problems that can be easily solved.
#-----------------------------
(Note: it is a pound sign with a bunch of dashes).
This will speed loading into browsers online, allow cut and paste operations, and ensure readability for the off-line printout readers. (I know that more people that just I do this!)
Brian
(Okay, one, I'm guessing you are objecting to the practice of using word instead of the address in the link so the text version only shows the word and drops the address. I can make sure this happens in sections that I do myself, but I really don't have time to do it for every article. I will print your letter and maybe that will give authors a push in the right direction. Second, I use whatever the authors send as listings and most do keep them between <pre></pre> tags without backgrounds. Mr. Coldiron article last month did use backgrounds. His article has been quite popular. Thanks for writing, --Editor)
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CONTENTS ]](../gx/indexnew.gif)
![[ FRONT
PAGE ]](../gx/homenew.gif)
More 2¢ Tips!
Producing a resume in PDF with LaTeX
From: David M. Cook davecook@hotmail.com
Date: Mon, 01 Jun 1998 23:05:24 +0000
LaTeX and the resume.sty package are an easy way to produce a very
attractive resume under Linux. One just needs to fill in the
boilerplate provided. resume.sty is available from any CTAN
archive, such as cdrom.com:
htp://ftp.cdrom.com/.1/tex/ctan/macros/latex209/contrib/resume
However, I've found that windows users are often not familiar with the usual Postscript output of the dvips program or how to view it. Luckily, Ghostscript provides the ps2pdf program for converting Postscript to Adobe's Portable Document Format, which is fairly familiar to windows users.
However, converted ps documents that were produced from LaTeX source using the default Computer Modern fonts look very poor when read with the Adobe PDF reader. The trick is to use the times package, which changes all the fonts produced by your LaTeX source to one the Adobe reader can handle. Just include the package like this in your document:
The Mailbag!
\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{resume,times}
%other preamble commands
\begin{document}
%document body
\end{document}
Some other things worth mentioning here: PStill, another PS->PDF
converter; pdfTeX, which produces PDF instead of DVI files from TeX
input; and finally the TeX User's Group page which has tons of great
links:
ftp://ftp.cstug.cz/pub/tex/local/cstug/thanh/pdftex/
http://www.this.net/~frank/pstill.html
http://www.tug.org/interest.html
--
Dave Cook
UNIX system man pages
From: Andrew Josey a.josey@opengroup.org
Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1998 10:10:41 +0000
Hello, included is a possible tip for the Linux Gazette.
Ever needed to know what the official UNIX man page for a particular command or function says? A new web resource from The Open Group is the Common Access to the UNIX Man Pages, a hypertext html set of browsable pages common to all UNIX 95 and UNIX 98 branded systems.
To try it out see http://www.opengroup.org/common_access/
--
Andrew Josey
ext2 Partitions
From: Albert T. Croft acroft@cyber-wizard
Date: Mon, 08 Jun 1998 14:57:03 -0500
I recently ran into a small problem, and I think the results of it might be helpful to others. I was recently helping out a friend with a problem on his Linux machine, and we needed to find a file-unfortunately, neither of us knew where it might've been installed.
Having both ext2 and vfat partitions, we realized that doing a find command might take a while, and would probably give some false results. We knew there might be files with similar names on his vfat partition-files we were sure were not the ones we were looking for. We knew the files we were looking for would only be on the ext2 partitions.
We started looking for an answer with the -mount option for the find command; unfortunately for us, it only looked at files on the same device as the path given to the find command. (A look at the results of the mount command shows why that would be a problem for us.)
/dev/hda2 on / type ext2 (rw) none on /proc type proc (rw) /dev/hda6 on /home type ext2 (rw) /dev/hda8 on /tmp type ext2 (rw) /dev/hda7 on /usr type ext2 (rw) /dev/hda1 on /win95 type vfat (rw,umask=0111)
We tried writing a batch file, using grep and gawk to get the mount points for the ext2 partitions and handing them to find. This proved unworkable if we were looking for patterns, such as h2*. We then tried to write just a find command, using gawk and grep to get the mount points. This was somewhat better, but using a print statement in gawk to get the names of the mount points wouldn't work. Some help came with remembering that gawk has a printf statement, allow.
Our final product, which we found quite useful and now have in our .bashrc files as linuxfind, is the following:
find `mount|grep ext2|gawk '{printf "%s ", $3}'` -name
To use as an alias:
alias linuxfind="find `mount|grep ext2|gawk '{printf "%s ", $3}'` -name "
Written this way, other options to the find command can be specified, such as -perm, -exec and -type. To use it, we simply type something like:
linuxfind less linuxfind h2* linuxfind x* -perm -2000
The only problems we can see with this command so far are (1) if there are drives mounted at login that are unmounted during the session, the mount points are still searched, and (2) if a drive is mounted after login, it is not included unless the .bashrc files is sourced.
--
Albert Croft
Re: bpp 16 Question
From: Michael Huttinger mhutt.removespam@netnitco.net
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 19:56:41 +0000
In regards to the question on starting X with 16 bitplanes instead of 8 (LG#28)...
I have done the following (assuming you are using XFree86)
Open up and edit your XF86Config file.
Look for the "Screen" section you are using. Add an entry right after that specifying the default colors of the format:
DefaultColorDepth 16
This will default your screen to 16 bit planes.
My example screen section follows:
Section "Screen"
Driver "accel"
Device "STB Velocity 128"
Monitor "My Monitor"
DefaultColorDepth 16
Subsection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
Subsection "Display"
Depth 32
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
EndSection
--
Mike Huttinger
Network Cards
From: Wari Wahab wari@tecnologist.com
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 21:36:27 +0800
Hi, there just like to give some tip or two regarding Network cards you have in you Linux Box.
I have a 3Com 3c90x in my computer and it's not working up to speed, I replaced it with anther one of the same kind and the most I get out of ftp transfers from my machine is a measly 220 KB/s.. Samba acted weird.. I thought that it's my network that caused the problem, indeed, it is the problem..
Our network is all Cisco and there seems to be some disagreement between the two brands, Changed my card to an Intel 'eepro100' and I can max out at 800 KB/s on a 10 Mbs network.. Cool.
So, if you find out that performance is not as cool (those Win NT guys may be laughing at you as they did to me wondering why Linux is Super Slow) as it should be, it could be the network card itself..
Regards,
Wari Wahab
Tip for using Windows 95 buttons in KDE
From: Jochen A. Stein jst@writeme.com
Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998 21:05:21 +0200
Following up to Andreas Ehliar's 2cent article in the June Linux Gazette, I took the same approach and made a patch for KDE to shift some functionality from ALT to the W95 key. Full instructions and patch against Beta-4 can be found on http://home.pages.de/~jst/kde-w95.html.
--
Jochen Stein
PPP, SLIP and Other Remote Service Support
From: Daniel Blezek blezek@worldnet.att.net
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 22:40:48 -0500
Hi, here's a short tip:
Recently, I started working from home on a UNIX system. The system I was working on did not support PPP, SLIP, or any other remote service except shell sessions over a 9600 baud modem. So I decided to download SLIrP(a program to emulate PPP/SLIP using only a shell session) to the remote system to emulate PPP over a shell connection. Here is the snag, the remote system did not support zmodem, ymodem, kermit or any of the other file transfer protocols. Since I had no TCP/IP connection, I could not use rsh, or ftp. Solution? I used uuencode to convert the SLIrP binary to text, started vi on the remote system, and copied and pasted the entire text(all 360K) into the remote shell session. After eating dinner, I returned to write the uuencoded binary to the remote hard disk, uudecoded it, uncompressed it, and started up SLIrP on the remote system. After pppd came up on my LINUX system, I was fully connected.
Ain't LINUX fun?
--
Dan
|
Contents: |
August Linux Journal
The August issue of Linux Journal will be hitting the newsstands July 10. The focus of this issue is Navigating Linux and our feature article is an interview with Marc Andressen and Tom Paqin of Netscape done by Doc Searls. Check out the Table of Contents at http://www.linuxjournal.com/issue52/index.html. To subscribe to Linux Journal, go to http://www.linuxjournal.com/ljsubsorder.html.
An Invitation: The Future of Linux with Linus Torvalds
On July 14, 1998, at 6:00PM, Taos Mountain ( http://www.taos.com/ ) in association with the Silicon Valley Linux User Group (http://www.svlug.org/) will present a panel discussion on THE FUTURE OF LINUX. Linux is a freely available version of the UNIX operating system.
Panelists will include Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux; Robert Hart from retail Linux distributor Red Hat Software; Larry Augustin of the Silicon Valley Linux User Group and director of Linux International, a non-profit consortium of Linux users and vendors; and Jeremy Allison, the developer of SAMBA. Phillip Hughes, publisher of Linux Journal, will question the panelists.
For more information:
Michael Masterson,
MMasterson@taos.com
LINC: Linux conference in Silicon Valley, California
Mon, 15 Jun 1998 23:56:32 +0000
LINC, the International Linux Conference and Exposition, will be held
in Silicon Valley, California next January.
We have just issued a Call for Papers, and we encourage Linux developers to send abstracts for talks or tutorials.
More info at: http://lincexpo.org/
Complete Press Release If you have any questions, please mail me.
For more information:
Don Marti,
dmarti@electriclichen.com
Position Available: network security - development/maintenance
Tue, 23 Jun 1998
SecurePipe Communications is currently accepting resumes for a
network security support and development position.
Responsibilities will include support of installed firewalls, development and maintenance of open-source network security solutions, and support of existing mail and web servers.
For more information:
http://www.securepipe.com/jobs.html
Joshua Heling,
jrh@securepipe.com
SecurePipe Communications, Inc.
GNU Utilities Integrated Development Environment project
Mon, 15 Jun 1998 08:47:02 GMT
GUIDE: GNU Utilities Integrated Development Environment
The purpose of this project is to merge existing GNU and GPL utilities into a graphical GPL Integrated Development Environment, which contain editor, class browser, debugger, profiler, man generator, code checking, testing, animation, and management.
Go to http://sunsite.auc.dk/GUIDE/ and join the mailing list.
For more information:
Knud Haugaard Sxrensen, khs@mi.aau.dk
WWW: Linux search engine in beta
Mon, 15 Jun 1998 08:50:18 GMT
Take a look at
http://linux.ncg.net/search/
A search engine with a different twist.... We index only Linux related web pages, and in addition to searching in the robot index, we'll look up the keywords in our resource listings as well.
The engine uses heuristics to exclude most pages that aren't relevant to Linux. Currently the engine is in early beta, with a small index of about 75.000 documents as of 11th June, and growing at a rate of a few thousand documents pr. day. It might seem small, but the index contains most of the important Linux sites already, and is getting quite useful.
Since we track what subjects that are most popular to search for, you also help us improve the resource listing by testing the engine.
As soon as the indexer is well enough tested, we'll increase indexing speed dramatically (from 10 documents at a time currently, to about 300).
For more information:
Vidar Hokstad, vidarh@ncg.net
The Freefire Project (IT security solutions)
Wed, 17 Jun 1998 13:26:28 GMT
After some time in the dark I am happy to Announce the Freefire Project
The Freefire Project tries to support Developers and Integrators in building IT Security Solutions (especially Firewalls) based on Free Tools (Open Source). It is not Operating System dependent, but a lot of the Tools on the Page can be used with Linux.
The Project features a web site where you can find a lot of useful links to free Security Tools and Resources. There is a monthly Bulletin giving some articles about recently discovered tools.
There is a Mailing list for Developers. You DO NOT need to subscribe if you don't develop tools on your own. In this case it will be enough to enter you= r E-Mail in the Announce-Form on the Web Pages or monitor the Web-Pages.
http://www.inka.de/sites/lina/freefire-l/index.en.html
The Start page is also available in German:
http://www.inka.de/sites/lina/freefire-l/index.de.html
Also searching for contributors to the Bulletin and for Links to Tools which are not yet on the Pages.
For more information:
Bernd Eckenfels.
ecki@lina.inka.de
Linux Links
Open Source Devloper Day Press Release: opensource.pr
The Open Source Index: http://home.maine.rr.com/sickthing/osi
List of Linux Mailing Lists: www.linuxrx.com/Lists/Lists.perl
Linux Buyers Guide: http://www.linuxbuyersguide.com/
Linux Applications: http://www.cynetcity.com/cyberzone/497/ Linux Book Guide: http://members.bellatlantic.net/~ptgeiger/guidehome.htm
Article about Linux in Computer Currents Magazine: http://www.currents.net/magazine/national/1612/inet1612.html
The Linux Console Tools: http://www.mygale.org/~ydirson/en/lct/
Article "How Linux Could Kill Windows NT": http://www.zdnet.com/chkpt/adem2fpf/www.anchordesk.com/story/story_2241.html
Linux Rally: http://www.penguincomputing.com/svlug-rally.html
Time Magazine Article: http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/article/0,2334,13820,00.html
PC-Internet
Check out the new PC-Internet at http://www.pc-internet.com/ (the site is in Spanish only)
WrapBit 0.2.1 - virtual object storage and programming environment
Thu Jun 25 12:47:56 1998
The WrapBit version 0.2.1 is now available. Read more about it from the
active server at http://public.comput.com/WrapBit/
WrapBit is a virtual, persistant, write once object storage and
programing environment. A small kernel serves forge proofed data, meta
data and dynamic views (object invocation). XML is featured (but not imposed)
for object control messages.
w3mir 1.0.3 - HTTP copying and mirroring tool
Thu Jun 25 12:56:55 1998
w3mir 1.0.3 has been released and is available at
http://www.math.uio.no/ now.
Fixes include
w3mir is a all purpose HTTP copying and mirroring tool. The main focus of w3mir is to create and maintain a browsable copy of one, or several, remote WWW site(s). Used to the max w3mir can retrive the contents of several related sites and leave the mirror browseable via a local web server, or from a filesystem, such as directly from a CDROM.
w3mir supports HTML4, and has partial support for CSS, Java, ActiveX and Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files.
Alphanumeric Paging Software beta test
Mon, 15 Jun 1998 09:02:46 GMT
EtherPage(TM) is now available on Linux
Calling beta testers for our EtherPage product running under Linux. If interested, you can download software and request an evaluation license code from http://www.ppt.com/eval/version30.html
EtherPage is a client/server based product for delivering messages from computers to wireless messaging services such as alphanumeric and numeric pagers. The product includes a web interface for interactive use and administration, a command line interface and a C API.
tomsrtbt-1.4.66
Mon, 15 Jun 1998 09:01:35 GMT
tomsrtbt-1.4.66.tar.gz is available at Sunsite.unc.edu to be placed into
system/recovery and http://www.toms.net/~toenser/rb/.
It is a boot/root rescue/emergency floppy image with more stuff than fits. Bzip2, 1722Mb formatting, and tighter compilation options helped jam it on. tomsrtbt is useful for "learn unix on a floppy" as it runs from ramdisk, includes the man-pages for everything, and behaves in a generally predictable way.
The home page is: http://www.clark.net/~toehser/rb/.
MpegTV Player 1.0 released for Linux/Alpha
Mon, 15 Jun 1998 10:30:37 GMT
MpegT@ Player 1.0 has been released for Linux/Alpha. MpegTV Player 1.0 is a
realtime software MPEG Video player with audio/sync.
MpegTV Player is a Shareware (US$10) for personal and non-profit use. Commercial licenses available.
Key features include support for 8 bit, 16 bit and 24 bit display, random access, frame capture and a VCR-like graphic front-end.
Download MpegTV Player 1.0 (mtv) for linux-alpha from: ftp://ftp.mpegtv.com/pub/mpeg/mpegtv/player/alpha-unkown-linux/
Motif Interface Builder VDX 1.2
Mon, 15 Jun 1998 11:16:16 GMT
Release 1.2 of VDX, the Motif Interface Builder for Linux is ready
for download. The VDX provides the interactive design of user
interfaces based on OSF/Motif and generates portable C and C++
source code. Tools like Resource Editor, Browser and the
interactive WYSIWYG View make the design process very easy. Their
object oriented interface and the adaptable code generation are
cool features.
Interested? Visit the VDX Home Page at http://www.bredex.de/EN/vdx/
R 0.62.1 released: statistical computation and graphics
Wed, 17 Jun 1998 13:20:17 GMT
R version 0.62.1 has been released and will propagate through the CRAN
mirrors within the next few days. The have been lots of changes, any R
user should definetely upgrade to this version.
R is a system for statistical computation and graphics. It consists of a language plus a run-time environment with graphics, a debugger, access to certain system functions, and the ability to run programs stored in script files.
CRAN is a network of ftp and web servers around the world that store identical, up-to-date, versions of code and documentation for the R statistical package. Please use the CRAN site nearest to you to minimise network load.
The CRAN master site can be found at the URL http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/
Mobitex Radio Modem Driver
Wed, 17 Jun 1998 13:21:40 GMT
Announcing the release of a new network driver which
implements the MASC data link layer protocol, enabling Linux to use
Mobitex radio modems as network devices. Armed with radio modems and a
subscription to a Mobitex operator, you can create a network
interconnecting two or more Linux systems wirelessly using TCP/IP or your
own custom protocol.
The driver has been verified to be stable on 2.0.30 through 2.0.33 kernels and is hence ready for release. The package includes a basic FAQ list, a HOWTO document, driver source and a couple of tools.
Take a look at ftp://ftp.linuxrx.com/pub/linux-contrib/
sfm 1.4 - Simple File Manager
Wed, 17 Jun 1998 14:02:46 GMT
Announcing the release a new version of sfm. There's a lot of great
improvements between this version and the 1.1 version.
Some important changes:
For more information look at http://www.chez.com/prigaux/sfm.html
You can find there a binary (i386, glibc, gtk+) version. It has been tested (not fully) on i386 and solaris.
Any remarks and bug reports are welcome at pixel_@geocities.com.
Linux Router Project v2.9.2 - networking centric mini-distribution
Sat, 20 Jun 1998 17:32:40 GMT
v2.9.2 of linux router is out. LRP is now fully glibc based, and this is a
very solid release.
You can download it from: ftp://ftp.psychosis.com/linux/linux-router/
And get more info from: http:/www.psychosis.com/linux-router
Slidedraw-0.10 - drawing/presentation program
Sat, 20 Jun 1998 17:29:11 GMT
Slidedraw is a drawing program for presentation slides.
Some new features added:
Get it at http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/Incoming
SFS Software's iavaZIP
04 Jun 98 0100 WN
SFS Software announced a new version of it's certified 100% pure Java
compression utility iavaZIP. The full-featured, pioneering file
compression program offers some unique features.
iavaZIP's key advantage is that it lets you create archives containing files from multiple folders and subfolders--even from different volumes--in the same session.
iavaZIP is compatible with PKZIP, supports 10 compression levels and runs cross-platform on every Java 1.1 supported operating system like Windows 95/NT, Unix, Linux, SGI, AIX and OS/2. The Java Archive format (JAR) is also supported. The product is available now through shareware distribution and is priced at $49 for the standard single user license. Also available are Academic Single user licenses ($29) and attractive high volume discounts.
SFS Software's WebSite at http:www.sfs-software.com
Protecting Networks w/SATAN
Mon, 8 Jun 1998 15:48:49 -0700 (PDT)
Because SATAN (Security Administrator's Tool for Analyzing Networks)
could detect weaknesses on other systems (as well as your own) through
its web interface, it earned notoriety when released in April 1995 as
the tool that would "wreak havoc" on the Internet. The Oakland Tribune
even wrote: "It's like randomly mailing automatic rifles to 5000
addresses. I hope some crazy teen doesn't get ahold of one."
But as more and more "mission critical" applications are accessible through the web, administrators are turning their attention to the danger of attempted intrusion from outside the networked host. SATAN is a powerful aid for system administrators. It performs "security audits," scanning host computers for security vulnerabilities caused by erroneous configurations or by known software errors in frequently used programs. O'Reilly's latest release, "Protecting Networks with SATAN", is an invaluable tool for network and security administrators working with SATAN.
Protecting Networks with SATAN
By Martin Freiss
1st Edition June 1998 (US)
112 pages, 1-56592-425-8, $19.95 (US$)
http://www.oreilly.com
Conix 3D Explorer
Wed, 17 Jun 1998 19:51:05 -0800
Conix Enterprises, Inc. announce the release of Conix 3D Explorer on Linux.
With a single command 3D Explorer brings your Mathematica
graphics to life in an interactive OpenGL window, providing advanced
rendering capabilities previously reserved for high-end rendering systems.
3D Explorer provides a new graphics type, GLGraphics, with extended graphics primitives and directives. New features include continuous surfaces, display lists, inline transformations, and per-element control over all graphics options.
3D Explorer comes with online documentation, including user's guide, reference manual, programming examples, and demos. Quality email technical support is provided by Conix Enterprises Inc., tech@conix3d.com. For more information, see http://www.conix3d.com
LinuxCAD v 1.55
LinuxCAD v 1.55 will be priced at the same level $75+tax and shipping. All users who will prepay LinuxCAD v 1.55 before July 25, will get extended free upgrades until July 1999.
To learn more about LinuxCAD visit http://www.linuxcad.com
Nighthawk 2.1 and FunktrackerGOLD 1.5 (announcement)
Mon, 22 Jun 1998 23:13:50 +0930 (CST)
Nighthawk 2.1 (nighthawk-2.1.tgz) and FunktrackerGOLD 1.5
(funktracker-1.5.tgz) have now been released. You can find them on:
http://www.downunder.net.au/~jsno/rel/unix_projects
Nighthawk is an X11 arcade game with sound and music. FunktrackerGOLD is a digital music tracker. Read my page for more details on them. Take a look at http://www.downunder.net.au/~jsno both come under the GNU GPL.
CYBERSCHEDULER FOR LINUX v2.1
Wed, 24 Jun 1998 18:34:09 -0700
CrossWind Technologies offers CyberScheduler, web-based calendaring and
scheduling software for workgroups. It has been designed to leverage an
organization's existing web resources:
More information about CrossWind Technologies and a live on-line demo of CyberScheduler is available on the Web site at http://www.crosswind.com
The Answer Guy
Linux and SCO Keymap --or--
linux kernel security --or--
Dosemu and virtual terminals? --or--
NT Domain and Linux --or--
DAO software for linux? --or--
tn3270 security
readdress COM port to 3 or 4
Lilo won't boot --or--
help on unix --or--
winprinters & MTAs: Pointers and Corrections
FoxPlus for Linux? --or--
auto response for email ?
Connecting Linux to Win '95 via Null Modem
PC lockups --or--
gzip from C program --or--
LOVE THE NEW LOOK!!!!
please, advice about Linux and C500 --or--
printing Solaris->Linux --or--
Help Wanted --or--
Memory deallocation problems --or--
tv cards and dual monitor
Well another month is upon us. This last month was particularly busy since I was able to afford the USENIX technical conference, in New Orleans --- the best annual gathering of fellow Unix and Linux nerds I've ever found. If you can get your boss to send you to just one computing technical conference in the next year --- ask for it to be this one (or the USENIX/LISA --- Large Installation Systems Administration which will be in December).
Linus was there with his wife, Tove, and their two baby daughters. He agreed to host an "intimate little BoF" (Birds of a Feather discussion) which turned out to have over half of the conference attending it (much to his surprise).
The '97 USENIX in Anaheim had a "parallel track" for Linux. This year had one for "Freenix" (collectively referring to FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and the GNU HURD, in addition to Linux). It's important for us (Linux users) to recognize that Linux wasn't the first "free" Unix kernel, and it is by no means the only one.
I've been trying to encourage the free *BSD users (all variants) to come out of the woodwork and show up at their local Linux user's group meetings. I know they'll be welcome at the Silicon Valley LUG (http://www.svlug.org) and I sincerely hope that they'll be welcome at other Linux events. Now that we're getting enough market share to get noticed in the press, and to have some effect on the decisions of hardware and software vendors (particularly in the areas that relate to documentation and NDA's) --- it would be a very bad time for us to get embroiled in the sorts of infighting that's been stifling the commercial Unix vendors for so long.
I noticed an interesting press release (forwarded to me by my wife) regarding Microsoft's new "WISE" (Windows Interface Source Environment: http://www.microsoft.com/win32dev/base/wise.htm) which basically looks like a scheme to bolster the commercial Unix vendors up in their battle against the free Unix clones (by providing them with some limited support for running Windows '95 software). (From the looks of it the WINE and Bochs projects may eventually be more capable).
Luckily these, and the other interesting user space projects that are going to make Linux more accessible to non-technical users, like GNOME, KDE, and GNUStep are portable. Linux has been a primary development platform for many of these projects --- but they all run under other versions of Unix.
So, while it may look like Linux is "taking over the world" --- it is also opening up a world of opportunity for all of the other Unix variants. There are now a few million users of Linux that will feel right at home in just about any Unix on just about any hardware.
Perhaps that's why Sun and SGI are both supporting Linux projects.
SCO Compatible Console Keymaps?From Jim Kjorlaug on 25 Jun 1998
I work for a company that sells vertical solutions using
SCO unix as a
platform. We are currently looking at linux as another possible
platform and I have found a possible contention. Does there exist a
keytable that causes the linux keyboard to behave like an SCO console.
I have already worked out the termcap for SCO ansi to work on linux but
some of the keymaps have me stumped. Any suggestions or advice would be
greatly appreciated. I realize that we could modify our application but
it would be much easier if it were possible with a keytable.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
Jim Kjorlaug
Teleflora Technologies
I don't know how a SCO console keymap is supposed to behave --- but Linux does have utilities to remap the console keyboard to your heart's content. All of the popular distributions include the 'loadkeys' and 'dumpkeys' programs (parts of Andries Brouwer's 'kbd' package). You can look at the man pages for these for details.
I've never used these packages much --- just once to set up "sticky shift" keys for a friend who lost most of the use in one arm to a stroke a couple of years ago and again to answer some other question back before I started this column.
It does seem quite odd that you'd go for console specific binding rather than using the more portable termcap/terminfo (curses/ncurses) interfaces which would allow your app to be accessed via terminals, over modem/dial-up connections, across telnet sessions and from within xterms. However, I'm sure you have your reasons.
Yann Dirson is working on a package called "Linux console tools" which enhances the kbd package.
There is also a console fonts package (the 'setfont' command is also included with many Linux distributions; it allows you to choose from among about 100 different VGA/EGA compatible console fonts, some of which are quite silly). Andries Brouwer is apparentlly the co-author of the console fonts package, too.
Good luck on the port and welcome to the club.
Breakin' Out of the chroot() JailFrom Ron Arts on 25 Jun 1998
Hello,
I saw a post by your hand from 26 Apr 98 in
comp.os.linux.development.system where you said a lot of noteworthy
things on linux security. Also I have been talking to Jos Vos from
Xopen Systems (who wrote the ipfwadm package).
Both you and he noted the possibility to break out of a chroot jail
(once you become root there). It seems that devices are the weak
factor.
One approach would be the POSIX.1e "capabilities" (which are more like VMS style "privileges" than true "capabilities"). There is a bit of preliminary work being done on this in the 2.1.x kernels --- but nothing is likely be usable in 2.2 (so you're looking at Linux 2.4 before there is "stable" support for any of that).
Another approach is to limit the damage that 'root' can do using something like the BSD securelevel features. Last I heard on the Linux kernel mailing list they had dropped plans to put in simple 'securelevel' support in favor of a "more flexible" approach --- which would mesh better with the eventual POSIX.1e ("Orange Book") work.I'm a little shy on the implementation details and design but I think they said it would essentially be a bit field of limitations that would be set on a per process basis. There would be bits to prevent various syscalls like mknod(), chroot(), mount(), etc. In the POSIX.1e model this would later become the "maximum privileges mask" --- and the individual privileges would be set by meta data on the executable files (think of that as a list of about 80 "P" bits rather than just the SUID and SGID bits we have now).
- (The implementations of 'securelevel' in all of the popular BSD variants, free and commercial have been vulnerable to a few attacks via the /proc filesystem and more recently via ptrace() --- so having Linux adopt one of those designs might not be a sound idea. We'll see).
The argument for this is that we could set any set of this bits we want on the 'init' process (PID 1) to accomplish the same limitations as we get with BSD's 'securelevel'.
That's a pretty compelling argument so far as I'm concerned. My main hesitation beyond that has to do with code complexity. The BSD crowd has been trying to get their 'securelevel' implementations right for years --- and the ptrace() bug was just found a couple of weeks ago.
It's not a simple problem. NT's "object" model (and I use the term "object" very loosely) provides ACL's on files, registry keys, and all sorts of other OS elements. There is work underway to add ACL support to Linux --- over some filesystems at least. However, I'm convinced that ACL's are a fundamentally flawed security model --- and that opinion is based on some pretty good academic work.
Unfortunately the true capabilities security model entails a completely different programming paradigm --- it doesn't translate to Unix conventions at all. In my research (purely "armchair" or "book larnin'") I spent most of my energy trying to unlearn the Unix, Netware, and NT approaches.
You can read more about the capabilities security model at Jonathan Shapiro's "EROS" (extremely reliable OS) web site:(EROS is an ongoing research project which will hopefully eventually be available as a production operating system).http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~eros/
I have been thinking about disabling the mount() or
better the mknod() systemcall when executed from chroot'ed
programs (patching the kernel).
You can look at the existing patches (in the recent 2.1.1xx kernels) and possibly build on that.
Do you think that would be worth the effort? We currently run
ftpd, telnetd, sshd and some more things
chroot'ed in a very minimal linux
environment. Based on the false assumption that even when you make it
to becoming root you cannot break out of that.
The main advantage for chroot() have to do with limiting the number of SUID/SGID programs that are accessible in the effort to exploit various vulnerabilities that are used to get root or other unauthorized access. The other advantage is that you can limit the amount of snooping that a class of users (anonymous and guestgroup ftp, for example) can perpetrate on other users on the system.
In other words you can limit the exposure of your "general" users from some classes of other users. For a long time the most important element of this was to prevent FTP users from grabbing your passwd file and running 'crack' on it. With the advent of shadow password systems that has been much less of a concern.
These days the most common approach to securing systems is to create special, sacrificial hosts for each service and class of users. Linux and {Free|Net|Open}-BSD have made this an increasingly economical and attractive option since we can put any old "junker" 386 or better to work in this sort of role (some people are giving away 386 and 486 systems these days). This is easy enough for commercial sites --- but more of a problem for ISP's and educational sites, which traditionally still have shell access to at least some of their machines.
I think very few programs use mknod(), and that probably are
the programs you wouldn't allow in a chroot'ed environment anyway. I
also think it would be a relatively small patch, I've done some digging and
- not being a kernel expert - it seemed pretty easy. The only thing
left to find out is how to detect in the kernel that the current env
is chroot'ed.
Can you offer any thoughts on this, I'd like to know if I am on the
wrong track (again) here.
Thanks in advance,
Ron Arts
Netland Internet Services
If your organization needs these features and is willing to donate some web space and some personnel time and expertise to the project --- you'll be doing yourself and all of us alot of good.
- The Linux Weekly News article on it (search on the keyword "audit"):
- http://www.lwn.net/980625/
- Their currently archives/web site:
- http://www.nas.nasa.gov/Pubs/Mail/archive/linux-security-audit/
Clipper/xBase Capacity Problems
--- DOSemu as a Solution?From Steven Jackson on 25 Jun 1998
Hi AnswerGuy,
I was reading an article on the web about diskless
workstations and redhat when I recognised your name, (I think you
helped me out with redhat a long time ago, thanks).
I look after a small network of 4 pcs at a doctors surgery which
runs an accounting package and an appointments diary compiled under
Clipper. System Manager is run on the host pc which does all of the
local processing of these applications and the clients run as
virtual terminals.
In this model the .DBF files are normally stored on a network filesystem (Netware, LANtastic, and later WfW among others). I don't know if Samba or the Mars-NWE (Netware emulator) supports these forms of record locking.
It is unclear from your description how your are running this. You mention 4-PC's and Clipper (a DOS based compiler/developement package for dBase programming), which leads me to think of networked DOS systems --- then you mention "virtual terminal" which suggests that you're using a multi-user OS (like Linux).
Are you running DR or CCI's "Concurrent DOS" (or their later "M-DOS" or "Multi-user DOS") or something like TSL's "PC-MOS" (another multi-user MS-DOS clone)? Is "System Manager" yet another multi-user DOS?
Over the past year or so the system has run slower gradually to the
point where it is getting annoying. I'd like to try running linux
on the fileserver and somehow run the dos based clipper programs
under dosemu. I think it would be wise to keep all the *.dbf files
on the server rather than sending them over the network. I got the idea
from the recent Linux Journal article about the Latvian Police dept.
Regarding the notion of running the existing program under DOSemu . . .
- The first question is:
- Why is the performance degenerating?
- The obvious suggestions are:
- Have you been regularly "pack"-ing your databases (purging deleted records and transactions)?
Have you been maintaining your indices? (Indexing is usually a vital key to db performance).
Have you been defragmenting your filesystems regularly?
Has your system utilization increased in some marked way (you've added *lots* more customers, etc)?
Does your current design have any features or support for migrating old and inactive records to "archival" or "historical" databases (tables) so that the "active" db routines are maintained at feasible sizes?
Are there other activities on your LAN that might be causing network congestion?
I don't know if that will do any good at all. Since we don't know what is causing the problem, it seems premature to recommend solutions. My first thought is that moving the processing from four systems onto a single one (even a single system under a superior OS) is unlikely to improve overall performance.
Do you have any ideas about how I could embark upon this?
Thanks,
Steve Jackson
... their web pages suggest that they will soon be shipping betas of a "visual" frontend for xBase programming. That should be interesting for all those "VB" and "VC++" developers that are still clinging desperately to Microsoft's platform.
Or you might try X2C from:The questions I asked above may give you some ideas for some "stopgap" measures (re-index, defrag, migrate inactive records, etc). In the long run you'll want to do some analysis to see if the current system can continue to meet your needs.http://www.on-the-net.com/x2c/
If you do decide to go with a client server model you have many choices that run under Linux. There are the free and shareware packages like mSQL, Beagle and MySQL and there are a number of commercial packages like InfoFlex Adabas, and the JustLogic SQL. Rather than give URL's to all of these I'll just point you at the definitive guide to RDBMS packages for Linux --- maintained by Christopher B. Browne at:... and another excellent list of Linux business applications maintained by Linas Vepstas (NOT to be confused with Linus the kernel guy) at:http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/rdbms.htmlI should mention that you aren't limited to just xBase or SQL --- there are a number of alternative DBMS system that are available to Linux and other Unix users and programmers --- including a number of object-oriented and hybrid systems. Allegedly there's even Linux support for the venerable Pick system.http://www.linas.org
http://www.linas.org/linux/db.html
Linux as a "Domain Controller" for
a WinNT Domain? Not Yet!From Cesar Augusto Kant Grossmann on 25 Jun 1998
Hi James!
Again a problem to me, and a exercise to you.
Is it possible to make the Linux Box do login authentication
requests from a NT Domain Server?
I have a Linux box in a TCP/IP network, part of a large NT Domain,
and want to allow NT domain-users to log in the Linux Box and access
Internet in it. The idea is provide access to the Linux Box without
having to register every user. The users donīt need a regular
account, with home directory, because Internet access is not
frequent (thanks to a low connection) and they only use it to
surfing (not email, not FTP).
Since the whole PAM project is still in beta (and not moving nearly fast enough for my tastes --- not that I've contributed to it nor that the programmers would want me to) I can't make any promises on how well it will work.
However the state of PAM can speak for itself at:(Andrew Morgan's pages on the Transmeta sponsored Linux site).http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/pam/
The module you might want to play with is by David Airlie and is at:Other modules (for things like one-time passwords, authentication on a Netware server, a couple of different "SecureCard" and "DESGold" cards, RADIUS, and support Kerberos realms, etc) can be found by browsing around at:http://www.csn.ul.ie/~airlied/pam_smb/http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/pam/modules.html
No, I don't want to make the Linux Box act as a firewall (I don't
have authorization to do that). And, again, sorry my bad english...
TIA
Cesar Augusto Kant Grossmann
Uruguaiana - RS - Brasil
If by "surfing" you mean that your users will only be using the Linux system as a web proxy --- why are you fussing with authenticating them at all? Why not just install Apache and configure it purely for caching/proxy use --- or use Squid (there are RPM's avaiable --- they were included with my copies of S.u.S.E.
Apache, CERN, and Squid can all be configured as caching web proxy/servers and can all be configured with a variety of limitations on which systems are allowed through in which directions. Do you really care which user is logged into the workstation that is using these proxies? That seems like an odd requirement unless you're also trying to enforce some other policies (like certain classes of employees are only allowed to "surf" during their lunch hour, etc).
I suggest you actually review your requirements a bit further. It sounds like you are complicating matters more than the situation requires.
"DAO" (Disk at Once) CDR?From Mark Heath on 25 Jun 1998
Hi there,
I've been searching high and low for DAO (disk at once) CDR
recording software for linux. Does any exist, Commercial or
otherwise?
I've email Jeff Arnold about a Linux port and he bluntly refused.
I've email'd HyCD who have a tool that appeared to support DAO and
claimed UNIX support. But their software didn't support DAO and
they weren't interested in a Linux port. I've informed them of this
hole in the Linux software market.
The closest thing that appears to be available is that Joerg
Schilling's cdrecord supports DAO MMC-3 (err i think that is the
spec) Of course my CDR (HP 4020i) isn't MMC compatible.
I've had a look at writing my own but it appears that every CDR has
a different command set to write in DAO mode. I think is was a
little out of my depth, since I couldn't even get the CDR to read
raw sectors.
So your help would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Mark.
I don't know anything about the difference between DAO and other forms of CDR recording. Normally, I'd spend an hour or two hunting around on Alta Vista, Yahoo!, Savvy Search, DejaNews, etc and pulling out more of my hair to find out. However, I have a book to write and a wife to feed, and it is just too close to my deadline for me to wait until tomorrow.
So, what is DAO and why would you need it? What is the difference between cdrecord and cdwrite (the one I use with my Ricoh CDR)? Have you tried them both? What is MMC? Who is Jeff Arnold? Who are HyCD and should we care enough to start another Linux grassroots "petition-the-vendor" campaign or should we just write more code to "do-it-ourselves"?
I'll publish this one --- and let you and the rest of my readership nail me with the answers. (Naturally I'll bounce you copies of the other responses as they trickle in).
tn3270 security From Art Blair on 25 Jun 1998
When I try to use tn3270 or X3270 on my redhat 5.0 box to
connect to our school's system I get
Is there a different version of tn3270 that has session security or some
way to enable it with what I have?
TELNET Server: Session security is required.
TELNET Server: Good-bye!!!
Connection closed by foreign host.
Thanx, Art Blair.
Are you sure you want to be using tn3270 (or x3270)
to make this connection? Are you connecting to an IBM mainframe or
minicomputer (presumably using the 3270 "block mode" ---
full-screen protocol --- and EBCDIC)?
please do not publish my email address or use it for
advertising
readdress COM port to 3 or 4From PJ on 25 Jun 1998
can you tell me how to readdress COM port2 to port 3 or 4?
I need to use COM port 2 for other device.
If you have a couple of COM ports built into your motherboard it is possible that you can disable or reset the I/O addresses, IRQ's and other details for your COM ports via the CMOS setup program (the interface through which you set the date and time, the hard drive type and geometry and various other firmware settings that are stored in extra registers of your PC's clock chip --- a chip which uses CMOS technology so that it dissipates very low power consumption and is thus suitable for operation off of a battery while the system is powered down).
This "setup" program is usually (almost always) stored in the system firmware (the BIOS ROM's on your motherboard) and is typically accessible at boot/power-up via some system dependent keystroke. Usually there is a message that is briefly displayed to note what the magic keystroke would be --- something like:If that doesn't work (either because your COM ports are not on your motherboard or for other reasons) you can open up the case and look at the various DIP and/or "berg" (jumper pins) settings that you'll find. Some of them may be labelled. There might also be a manufacturer's mark that might lead you to a website or phone number where you can get support and documentation for the device."Press <Del> not to enter Setup"
If you can't find any documentation for some cheap multi-function (IDE, floppy, COM, and parallel port) card --- your best bet is to buy a new one (typically $10 to $35 US) and toss the old one into a drawer as an emergency spare.
As a final note: please consider what it's like to answer such a question. You give no details about what sort of system you have, what you've tried (do you have any docs, have you looked at them), what device you're trying to add (odd that it must be on COM2 --- how do you know that), what OS distribution and software you're running, etc.
You send a two line question which cannot be reasonably answered in less than fifty. In IRC and on most newsgroups and mailing lists you'd either be ignored or flamed. We're all volunteers here and the one thing we ask is that you do your homework before you post.
I'm not saying this just to sound crabby (if I was going to be irate, I'd've just deleted this). If you don't do your homework --- and put considerably more thought and energy into your questions than you won't get any satisfaction out of the Linux community.
Installed on a Secondary SCSI HD:
Lilo Stops at LIFrom Rick V Smith on 9 Jun 1998
I have installed linux on my second scsi drive
the swap on a small partition on my first scsi. and lilo on a big mbr for my
win 95. the start of linux went well but when I shut down and went to restart
all that happens is Li and the system hang's
Any Idea's.
Thank's Rick
It sounds like your BIOS can't "see" the 2nd SCSI drive -- so Lilo can't "see" it either. The easiest solution would be to install LOADLIN into a DOS/Win '96 directory --- with a copy of your kernel(s). The kernel doesn't rely on the BIOS to access your drives (since it provide 32 bit native drivers for your SCSI card --- etc) so it will find its root filesystem with no problem.
Another think to try is to add the "linear" switch to your /etc/lilo.conf --- and then rebuild the boot block and boot map using the /sbin/lilo command. Read the lilo man pages and/or look at the lilo "user" and "tech" .dvi files using xdvi (under X Windows) for details.
There may be other settings that you'll have to tweak to get it working. This is particularly true if you have a large SCSI drive (my guess is that your second drive is bigger than 2 Gb -- and your first one isn't). Look in the CMOS/Setup settings (or whatever your SCSI card provides) for things that suggest that it is doing something "fun" to make the large drive "DOS compatible").
Jim,
I found the following line you wrote in a responce to someone else and
this cured my hair loss problem, that probably worked better than Rogain.
Thank's for the time and insight.
Rick
# The stanza for booting Linux.
image = /vmlinuz # The kernel is in /vmlinuz
label = linux # Give it the name "linux"
root = /dev/hda2 # Use /dev/hda2 as the root
filesystem
vga = ask # Prompt for VGA mode
append = "aha152x=0x340,11,7,1"
# Add this to the boot options,
# for detecting the SCSI controller
http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/Installation-HOWTO-8.html#ss8.2
Running Unix/Linux Under Win '9xFrom John Riddoch on the
comp.unix.questions newsgroup
on 05 Jun 1998
Jeff wrote:
I need a question answered. I am running Windows 95 and soon 98.
...
I was
wondering if there is any way to run the unix program itself in a
program window in Win 95,
unix is not a program; it is an operating system. You _cannot_
run two operating systems at the same time on the same hardware. Dual-booting
is a different matter.
just like you can run win 95 the same way on a mac.
???? I sincerely doubt it. Perhaps the mac had an emulator that ran
win 95 programs. Apart from anything else, win 95 is i386 only and
won't run on a 68000 (or whatever macs use these days).
Modern Macs run the G3 (PowerPC) processor, and the performance of Win '95 under VirtualPC is tolerable (about equivalent to a Pentium 90 on a 250 Mhz G3 Powerbook (laptop) and about a Pentium 75 on a 180 Mhz Performa).
Getting back to the original question:
There is a shareware package (distributed as source code and available for free evaluation) by Kevin Lawton called Bochs.
This started as a PC emulator (hardware) emulation for Unix (including Linux) that is allegedly capable of supporting Win '95 under emulation. It apparently isn't quite up to supporting NT (apparently the CPU emulation is only 386 and NT requires 486 or Pentium emulation). For info on that look at the Bochs web site: (http://world.std.com/~bochs/). It looks like Kevin will be upgrading the processor emulation as time (and possibly funds) allow. Apparently you can License this package for $25. (I haven't used it yet, but I might send him the money just 'cause I'm so impressed by the effort).
I know this doesn't answer the question Yet but hang with me a moment. Someone named David Ross seems to have ported Bochs to the Win32 platform, thus allegedly allowing one to run Linux, FreeBSD, or (presumably) most other forms of x86 Unix.
if you can gimmie a hand and maybe tell me some sites where i can
download some software please tell me.
You might try http://www.linux.org/
for a few pointers. Do some web searches for linux and read some stuff.
RedHat linux 5.0 is a reasonable version which is nicely pre-packaged for
you and fairly easy to install
(http://www.redhat.com/).
Don't do it.
You can buy a cheap PC (even an old used 486) for next to nothing (I've recently had one 40Mhz 386 given to me for free); and you can install Linux on that.
(My main household server is a 10 year old 386/33 with 32 Mb of RAM. Eventually I'll install some extra RAM and a new disk into that "new" 386 and throw it up as an extra server on my LAN).
Once you have a machine (give it at least 16Mb and at least a 540Mb drive) then you can just slap a null modem between it and you desktop machine, or toss in a couple of ether cards and a cross-over 10BaseT cord (or even by a little 4 or 5 port hub). Once that's done you can use a terminal package (like Hyperterm, Telix, or K95 -- Columbia U's Kermit for Win '9x), or even Kermit for DOS) to connect to the Linux box. If you go the ethernet route you can use Win '95's 'TELNET.EXE' or you can still use K95 (it's also a telnet client --- and it's terminal emulation is far less buggy than Microsoft's --- so you won't need a custom termcap/terminfo file to run "curses" (Unix/Linux "full scree" terminal/console) applications).
There are two reasons for me to suggest this approach:
First, you are likely to be very unhappy with the performance of running any form of Unix under emulation. Although Linux performs adequately on a 386 with only 16Mb of RAM --- and some kernels can run in as little as 2Mb --- you'll probably just find emulation to be too frustrating to be useful --- particularly when using any Unix networking utilities.
The only two viable reasons I can see for the mode of operation that you've requested are:You won't learn as much about Unix by running it under emulation --- and you'll probably end up being too frustrated by its performance to come away with a realistic appreciation of it.
- You want to play with Unix to learn it.
- You want to use Perl/awk, or other text processing tools that are considered to be "Unix" utilities.
In the other case you can get versions of Perl, awk, and most other Unix utilities, shells, editors and many other tools that have been ported to Win32 (and even to DOS, often using the GNU'ish Go32 "DOS extender").
The other reason for my suggestion is that Linux, even on a lowly 386, makes a great server. My box has over 6Gb of online storage (which I'll probably double in the 40Mhz) a magneto optical drive, a CD-ROM and a CDR recorder, a 4mm DAT autochanger, a modem line (which handles uucp, incoming and outgoing fax, dial out terminal/BBS'ing, dial in terminal, and dial out PPP and will handle dial-up PPP when I get around to configuring it), a null modem into the living room (for use from an old XT laptop) and some other toys.
The machine has currently been up for about three months.
I forget why I rebooted three months ago, maybe I built a new kernel for it or maybe I just made some changes to the startup files and wanted to make sure it would come up automatically. It's been used as my mail gateway and newserver for a few years --- and it was used as my primary interactive machine (mostly text editing) for years. My wife and our various house guests sometime still use it or the dumb terminal to read their mail (if they don't want to use one of the Pentium's in the living room or in my bedroom). Sometimes I dial into to it from a client site (I'm a consultant) or even from some local coffee house using the Ricochet wireless to telco gateway (offered in selected areas by Metricom: (http://www.metricom.com/).
You can use Linux as a gateway. Its kernel offers an optional feature called "IP Masquerading" which is a special form of "network address translation" (NAT) that allows you to hide a whole network of computers (using "private net IP addresses" like 10.*.*.*, 192.168.*.* and others defined in the RFC 1918). It is trivial to install a package called 'diald' that will dial up your ISP on demand (automatically when any of you computers try to access the Internet -- or any other non-local nets) and will automatically drop the line after a configurable period of inactivity. This puts virtually no load on a machine (not measurable on my 386!).
Another handy server role you can assign to your Unix box (Linux or otherwise) is as a household schedule/reminder service. The Unix 'cron' and 'at' facilities are just perfect for this. You can write simple scripts and schedule them for periodic execution (cron) or for one time execution in the future (at). With slightly more complex scripts (using the GNU 'date' command, and simple shell conditionals and tests) you can do arbitrarily complex scheduling. It is truly easy to set this up to automatically e-mail you reminders post them to your "intranet web server" or to even page you (using a normal modem) as an alarm service.
Eventually I expect someone to release a set of CGI scripts to act as a front end to a reminder/alarm service --- which you could toss up on your "intranet" server.
Using a little box as an "intranet" web server for a household or small business also takes almost no memory or CPU power on a Linux or FreeBSD box. I think the overhead is about 70K for a small web server, and you can even configure them to be "dynamically" loaded if you're really pressed for RAM. The little box can also function as a fileserver for you Win '95 box by using Samba, a Unix package that provides Windows/NT compatible file sharing. It's easy to run all of these functions on the same box, they don't conflict with one another at all, and most of them present very little load on the server.
On top of all that you can use the old clunker to run household appliance over the old BSR X-10 "Powerhouse" interface (also sold as "ActiveHome"). Larry Wall just gave a talk at the Silicon Valley Linux user's group showing us a demo of how he's automated his house. It was incredibly amusing. He has a detector on his clothes dryer, in the garage, that announces through the household PA system when the laundry is done; and motion sensors on the walk way leading up to the front door to announce visitors, and scripts to tell his wife and kids when they get mail (presumably he gets too much mail to want such an announcment for himself).
Naturally you can put a sound card in the PC and run PA/Speakers off of it to do various cool things.
The point is that you can't do all of this when you're running Unix in an emulator under Win '95 (since the chances are too great that you'll need to reboot it, and also since your emulator won't have access to most of the hardware that we're talking about --- it can only access the virtual/emulated hardware. The other problem is that Win '95 is generally not nearly as stable as any form of Unix. Even NT doesn't come close to Linux, FreeBSD, or any of the popular forms of Unix for stability.
For the same reasons you won't benefit nearly as much from a dual or multi boot configuration. There's not much point to having a "server" that you keep rebooting to play Doom (which is available for Linux, BTW) or to read that MS Word document.
Although I've focused on Linux (and I prefer it for my personal use) all of what I've said applies to FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD among others. (There are some differences, the *BSD's don't have their NAT/masquerading and packet filtering in the kernel -- it's run as a user process, things like that. If you're learning Unix for professional reasons I'd definitely suggest that you clock in some time and practice on any one of the BSD systems as well as on a Linux box. Potential employers (in Unix savvy companies) will be far more intrigued by entry level applicants who've worked with BSD.
Also, if you want to play with the X Window system (the dominant tehnology for supporting GUI's under Unix --- though, technically, it is a communications protocol and programming API --- and not a "GUI") you won't want to run it on less than a Pentium. In that situation I'd put one (character only) installation on the cheap/used PC and install a dual boot configuration on your main (Win '95) workstation. The best way to do that is to install an extra hard drive on the workstation (so you don't need to repartition your existing drives).
Even you decide to put one of the BSD's on your cheap/used server you should probably still put Linux on your Win '9x workstation. There are two reasons for this:You could install Linux on the workstation and have it access most of its files (almost all of them) over the network (over NFS). All you need on a Unix box is a fairly small "root" filesystem. 20 Mb is enough for all the "root" files (all you really need is /etc, /dev/, and /sbin -- the rest can all be mounted over the LAN though I'd suggest adding a local swap file or partition, and a local /tmp directory).
- there are more commercially available productivity applications available for Linux (WordPerfect, StarOffice, Applixware, Cliq, Wingz, etc).
- Linux has very good support for DOS, and Windows filesystems (and even some, read-only and even NTFS and HPFS). You can even install a small Linux distributions directly into a DOS subdirectory.
If you do an installation like this: (with one server installation on a dedicated PC and another on your workstation -- say FreeBSD on the server and Linux on a multi-boot for your Win '9x box) you'll get the maximum benefits and you'll learn enough about Unix to qualify for professional work in the field.
So, in conclusion: You won't learn nearly as much about Unix from any form of "emulation" or dual-boot arrangement. The principle advantage of Unix has always been the client server model it uses. Unix "wants" to be a server. It's as important to learn this philosophy as it is to learn the syntax for a couple hundred Unix commands. So, that's the best approach to installing and learning it around your house.
winprinters & MTAsFrom John Levon on 05 Jun 1998
Hi, two points:
1) for win printers, someone has written a PPA driver. i don't have
the URL, but it was mentioned in 2 cent tips a while ago i think.
This possibly enables win printers to be used with linux
The important message is that "Winprinters" and "Winmodems" are a big lose for everyone involved (even for Windows '95 users, who may find them "abandoned" in future versions of Windows and NT). These are not "progressive" developments in the hardware market. The other important message is that we shouldn't have to reverse engineer these protocols.
While I admire the heroic efforts of people like Andrew Tridgell (original architect of Samba, who implemented it by analysis of the packets off "the wire")
For those that are interested in some info on the HP PPA printer drivers for Ghostscript and Linux look at:... and follow their link to:
- Ghostscript Printer Compatibility
- http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/printer.html
... and for other printer stuff for Linux try Goob's:
- (Tim Norman's) PPA for the masses
- http://www.rpi.edu/~normat/technical/ppa/index.html
- Linux Links: Software : Utilities : Printer
- http://www.linuxlinks.com/Software/Utilities/Printer/
2) instead of www.faq.org, try www.faqs.org.
this is a top site that automatically contains HTML versions of FAQs on
rtfm.mit.edu
thanks,
john.
Thanks for catching that!
Dreaming about xBase tools for LinuxFrom Michael "Mookie" Kepler on the
L.U.S.T List
on 04 Jun 1998
Is there a FoxPlus program for Linux ?
When I use the SCO FoxPlus on Linux with iBCS module running,
it can not read the data files.
Thanks,
Jyh-shing Chen
Michael "Mookie" Kepler
Ha! Dream on! I'm decloaking and posting just because I'm
glad to meet another living dinosaur. I, too, have too much
experience with and an irrational attachment to FoxPlus.
This is a full dBase compatible system, and xBase compiler. (Actually I think it does a "compile to C" --- then you'd use gcc to actually produce your binaries. That makes it more portable I suppose).
You could also look at Christopher B. Browne's incredible annotated link farm of Linux business and productivity applications:... which has a page specifically one xBase dbms packages for Linux at: http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/rdbms05.htmlhttp://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/
Oddly enough Christopher doesn't mention Versasoft's dbMan (dbMan IV or dbMan 5.x). Perhaps the product has been discontinued. I couldn't find any URL for it though there are a number of references. I just guessed at "versasoft.com" and glanced at their web site, which only mentions one product (VersaTOOLS; a FoxPro add-on?). I've blind-copied the one e-mail address listed thereon, so that he can respond with any info on the fate of dbMan, if he feels so inclined.
So in answer to your question:
Yes! Dream on! There are dbms apps for Linux, and you DON'T have to use SQL.
(Also, if you ever want to work with a dbms package that's less like "DOS" and xBase, nothing like SQL and more like Unix shell script programming, look at Revolutionary Software's package: /rdb -- they have a Linux version. Apparently this /rdb is related to Rand/Hobbs RDB -- Christopher's pages talk about this a little bit.
I made my living pushing the limits of Sco FoxPlus for five
years, starting in 1989, making it do things it was never
meant to do. It is frustrating that so many people think
that SQL and Relational are synonyms, and that Relational
and XBase are mutually exclusive. Every database application
I created with FoxPlus conformed to the Relational data
model. There is nothing in FoxPlus to prevent this.
Please let me know if you find anything FoxPlus-esque that
works under Linux. I've been looking myself and have found
nothing comparable. If they would just release the source
code, we could get somewhere. Whenever I encounter a trivial
programming task, especially ones involving tabular data, I
always think of how much quicker and easier it would be to
turn it out in FoxPlus than 'C', or _shudder_ PlSql (yuck!).
From Thomas Good on the L.U.S.T List on 5 Jun 1998
Jim - I have the opposite problem. I want to lose foxpro in favour
of SQL. I run an odd mix of dbs including Postgres, Progress and FoxPro.
The foxpro is sitting on a dos box and is need of extinction. It is
(obviously) single user and so the person who sits on the box has to do
all of the data input and answer the phone - doing queries as requested.
I am moving her data onto a linux box and I want to shift the code from
foxpro to SQL. Any converters out there? Front end is not too important
as I will use perl (5 with DBI 0.91 and DBD-Pg 0.69). I just need to
rework the existing queries...thanks!
Tom
----------- Sisters of Charity Medical Center ----------
Department of Psychiatry
Thomas Good, System Administrator
North Richmond CMHC/Residential Services